Today in rhetorical mashed potatoes:

So on the one hand it's like: could you please stop throwing mashed potatoes at paintings? But on the other hand, ehh...they have a point.

The kind of point that can only be made by
 throwing mashed potatoes at a Monet.

"This is for the planet! And to a lesser extent
Cézanne and Manet, but mostly the planet!"

-well-rounded protestors

Throwing food at paintings is the cool new protest move being carried out by people who are, for some reason, tired of the dystopian hellscape that the planet Earth has become. This time it was mashed potatoes at Claude Monet's "Les Meules" at Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany. They were protesting the international community's general "It's probably fine/all us rich olds will be dead before the real shit hits the fan" approach to climate change. By smearing food on a French impressionist painting. 

Incessant heatwaves, wildfires and floods
 aren't doing it, but sure let's try soup.

In a video posted on Twitter, the group, ominously and probably not inaccurately called Letzte (last) Generation went on to explain:

"If it takes pelting a painting with mashed potato or tomato soup to remind society that the fossil course is killing us all, then we give you mashed potato on a painting."

-Letzte Generation helpfully explaining the

connection between Monet and potatoes

By tradition, outgoing Prime Ministers
regenerate into their successors in a spectacular
and often explosive release of energy.

The soup they're referring to is from an incident last month in which a London group called "Just Stop Oil" threw tomato soup at van Gogh's "Sunflowers" to protest fossil fuels, the cost of living, and the general shit-show that is the U.K.'s economy of late. Oh, and then they glued themselves to the wall. While the world is still careening down an increasingly destructive and irreversible path both environmentally and economically, British PM Liz Truss did recently resign while basically apologizing for still thinking supply-side economics ever worked. 

Pictured: everyone on the internet.

But probably not because of the soup thing, begging the question what's the point? Critics on the internet--sorry, I guess I can just say the internet--were quick to point out that defacing art does nothing to improve the world and that you don't have to destroy something beautiful or valuable to save something else, and they're kind of right. Housing isn't suddenly more affordable because someone threw soup at a van Gogh and Exxon and BP haven't folded because of Latzte Generation's potatoes slinging.

But we are talking about it, right? And to be clear, neither painting was actually damaged. This is the twenty-first century, these things are behind plexiglass and coated with resins or whatever to prevent exactly this kind of thing. And these groups are a hundred percent correct. Even if you don't like their methods, the ultra-wealthy and the fossil fuel industry are two of the things making the world un-livable. If these groups are willing to risk jail time to smack our collective selves out of our complacency, more power to them.

The confident expression of a Londoner who knows that these cops--or bobbies,
I guess--are about five to ten years away from having to go to work on police gondolas.